Leaving a snoring Rhapsody or Revery or Radiance on the bed, Norval went out in quest of coffee and cigarettes. On the freshly ploughed sidewalks he had a spring in his step, a pleasant awareness of his tasteful attire, above-average height and flabless abdomen. At a café called Metaforia, while gulping down espressos, he remembered the woman’s name. From his bag he pulled out a book bound in dove-grey Nigerian goatskin, with Rover’s Diary on the cover and alphabetical tabs on the side. On the “R” page, he wrote:
R Rainbaux. A self-described “biker-bitch.” Physically unimpeachable, but can never remember who came first, the Greeks or the Egyptians. Owing to a number of crippling intoxicants, I can’t remember much else. And in the night that bloody dream agai
He laid down his silver pencil-pen because the lead had snapped, lit another Gauloise, then flipped backwards:
Q Quincy. The quiet sort, endearingly shy but a tad prim—the kind that never go to the toilet without turning on the tap. The kind that would take love very seriously …
P Paola. A force of nature, a Sicilian volcano with lava in her veins. Velvety black eyes, raging raven hair, and a body to breed gladiators. One night not enough, but must play by the rules …
O Odile. Six feet tall, obscenely healthy, but she had her breasts done. Women, write this down: small is fine, drooping is fine, SILICONE REVOLTS US ALL. When we want balloons we’ll go to the circus.
N Niagara. (Her parents honeymooned at the Falls.) One of those salontanned women who try to look jet-setting and sexy with a pumpkin-coloured face …
M Marietta. A shortish fortyish Mensa-intelligent Afro-Portuguese fuckstress furiosa who scratched and screamed as I tongued from sole to crown …
L Laurie. Shorn pubic hair is bad enough in porn mags, but in real life? Women, stop this, now. All you’re doing is fuelling some child pornographer’s fantasies. AND PLEASE, FOR CHRIST’S SAKE: no shaven thunderbolts, hearts, arrows, exclamation points, X marks the spot or team logos. Rings, ball bearings and dangling chin-up bars should also be banished. As should buttockless underwear that cleaves to the crack …
A green-haired waitress interrupted his reading. Leaning over the table, she slid the bill underneath his cup, along with something else: the restaurant’s business card. Under the waitress’s blouse, Norval remarked, was nothing but the waitress.
“You’re Norval Blaquière,” she said, lisping with a tongue ring. “The actor thlash writer. You were amathing in Rimbaud in London. And I read your book—twithe. Tho romantic! And tho thad … God, how I cried over that book!”
Norval calmly shifted his gaze toward the card, which bore a handwritten message in red.
“You’re probably asked this all the time,” she continued, with slumbrous eyes and th’s for all sibilants, “but did you get a lot of rejections for Unmotivated Steps?”
“No.”
“You had a hit right off the bat?”
“I started at the top and worked my way down.”
“I was also wondering if … well, you’re probably asked this all the time, but I was wondering if you have any advice for aspiring writers?”
Norval squinted at the antic red letters, as if written wrong-handedly. “Yes, don’t become one.”
“You wouldn’t recommend it?”
“There are too many already, too many welfartists walking around calling themselves writers and artists who actually do fuck-all, besides filling out grant applications.”
The waitress laughed, pushed the hair back out of her eyes. “But seriously, what’s the best way to get published these days? Any advice?”
“Yes. Don’t recount your dreams, don’t puke up your diary, don’t write anything before age thirty.”
“Really? That’s not what my creative writing teacher said.”
“That’s why he’s teaching.”
“And didn’t you write your novel in your twenties?”
“Learn from my mistake.” Norval looked up from the card and gazed at her piercingly, as he gazed at every woman. “A rare Z. Pity it’s not your turn.”
“I’m sorry?”
“You’ll be up …” he paused to calculate, “ … in a couple of months. I will call, Zoé, depend on it.” He drew a mint twenty from his billfold.
“But I wasn’t—”
“Now if you’ll excuse me …”
On the sidewalk, or rather the gentrified cobbles of a pedestrian walkway, Norval examined the pedestrians: an assortment of tourotrash, fashion lemmings and inadvertent comedians. Some of the women, he judged, had made wearable purchases. None of the men had. What were they thinking when they stepped into those clothes? What did they see in the mirror? There is no reason for the nineties, which will go down in fashion history as the buffoon decade, to be dragged into the zeroes. A baseball cap, worn frontward or backward, knocks fifty points off your IQ. A bucket hat? Seventy-five. Pants with the crotch at kneelevel, revealing the cleft of your arse, making you walk like a penguin? A hundred. These articles are perhaps acceptable for four-year-olds, or circus chimps, but adult men?
“Excuse me,” he said, “what would you keep in a pocket on your calf ? And do you not realise that by storing toilet paper and yesterday’s lunch on your thigh, your limbs assume the girth of oak trees? And what about you? Yes, you. Why is your entire family wearing track suits? Is Montreal hosting a family Olympics? And you, with the canary balloon pants and Martian green headband. You will never get laid in an outfit like that.”
A cell phone trilled. “Shut that fucking thing off. You are too young to have a phone. You have nothing of importance to say to anyone. Yap yap yap. Generation Y: the dunderhead generation, the hundred-channel generation, basking in a state of know-nothingism. Men have fought wars, gone to their graves, so that you imbeciles can walk on treadmills and twiddle with joysticks. No one wants to hear you prattle in a public place, no one wants to hear your phone ring with a jaunty refrain. ‘Devil’s Haircut’? Beethoven’s Fifth? Cute. Now go to jail.”
Yes, he thought, jail. There should be a Ministry of Aesthetics and roving couth-squads. Instead of metal detectors or sniffer dogs, there’d be bad-taste detectors, special laser beams or spectrographs. If the alarm sounded, you’d be placed in a detention facility until appropriate clothes were found and fines levied. You’d be jailed for repeat offences. Three strikes and you’re out. Not capitally punished necessarily, but you’d be locked away for a long time, out of public sight. Antarctica, say, or Neptune. You’d take courses in aesthetics while doing time.
Excuse me, sir? You heard the alarm. Yes, it’s obvious you were in a hurry today. Name please? Thank you, I’ll just run that through my palmtop … Right, it seems you’ve got a lengthy record: reckless coordination, sensory assault, gaudily harm … This one will be for stupidity. Yes, I’m afraid those trousers look inane. Did you look in the mirror today? An orange prison jumpsuit would’ve looked better. It’s the fashion? I’m afraid that’s another fine—for herdism. Now don’t let me catch you on the street again in this outfit. Try to think for yourself. Eat salmon oil, which they say is good for the brain. Study yourself carefully in the mirror before going out, think very hard, and if you can’t come up with anything inoffensive, stay in your apartment. Which probably looks as bad as you do. Order out for food. Call the Ministry and someone will come and advise …”
The interior monologue stopped when Norval entered the Experimental Psych Building and saw someone standing by the elevator. Someone whose attire he approved of. He quickened his step. The elevator doors opened, the woman got in. Norval’s brisk walk turned into a dash. He made a lunge for the car, like a deft fencing manoeuvre, inserting his hand between the doors as they were an inch from closing.
Chapter 3
“SD”
With an aching that began in her toes and ended in her skull, as if metal doors were closing and re-closing on her temples, Samira Darwish climbed up the black marble steps of the U of Q Experimental Psychology & Chemistry Building. Sh
e hesitated before pushing the revolving door, and hesitated again before entering the elevator, whose doors were wide open. She pressed nine and the doors closed. Almost. Some imbecile stuck his hand in to prevent them.
As the man entered she looked down at the floor, determined to ignore him. But when she darted a glance his way, something happened. A mesmeric field of some sort inside the car. She literally could not take her eyes off him. He seemed to be of another, higher race: sable curls in wild profusion swept back from a high brow above dark liquid, brooding eyes; a steel-buttoned black-and-silver greatcoat of irreproachable fit; narrow-flare slacks of grey-brown suede; black ankle boots of the supplest leather. A kind of nineteenth-century Parisian elegance … as he knows all too well, judging by the look of princely conceit smeared all over his face.
Not exactly a stunner, thought Norval, but not below average either. He stared right back at her, deep into her dark eyes. Fey and dreamridden eyes, as though she’d just bid farewell to Galahad or Lancelot … He looked closer. No, more like Gilgamesh or Sindbad. “Middle Eastern, am I right?”
Samira had a roller-coaster sensation inside her stomach, as if the elevator cables were stretching like rubber and about to launch them into space. “Very good.”
“I see we’re both going to the ninth floor. You’re seeing Dr. Vorta?”
She shook her head. “Dr. Rhéaume.”
“You’re one of her students?”
Samira grabbed onto the handrail for support. “Yes. But that’s not why I’m seeing her.” Why did I add that last bit? she wondered as the elevator stopped and the doors opened.
With a lordly flourish, Norval invited her to exit. “What’s your name, by the way?”
From the hall she watched the doors rumble shut. “Must I tell you?”
“Yes. Your first name. Is it … Zubaydah? Gulbeyaz? Nefertiti?”
Samira half-smiled, shook her head after each name.
“Scheherazade?”
Her smile widened. “This could go on forever. It’s Samira.”
“Beginning with an s?”
Samira looked ceilingward. “Uh, yes, Samira begins with an s.”
“Perfect. S is what I require. Come. I’ve a few things to attend to with Dr. Vorta, to whom I’ll introduce you. Then we’re going for lunch. No, this is the right way—the open door on the left.”
As they approached it Samira glimpsed a fluted wooden pedestal on a grey filing cabinet, which supported a plastic human head divided into numbered sections. Two men stood on either side of it, as if engaging it in conversation. Amidst a faint smell of carbolic acid and monkey stool.
“Look, there’s old man Vorta now—the one with the vulturine face. My name’s Norval Blaquière, by the way. You may have heard of me.”
Hours later, she wasn’t sure how many, Samira was horizontal, high atop a loft in the Old Port, on a miraculously soft and silk-sheeted bed. She looked up through a skylight at a torn web of clouds, sideways at the frost-blue ribbon of the Saint Lawrence, and down at what looked like an art gallery from another century.
Rows of paintings adorned the walls, late nineteenth-century paintings in a decor that combined Regency and debased Gothic with elements of pure fancy. An archery target was suspended from the ceiling at one end of the immense living room, while an extravagant candle chandelier, the biggest Samira had ever seen, hung from the other. There was a curving staircase with wrought-iron balustrade, a fireplace with a Gothic slate mantel, wainscotted walls of fog-grey, and herringbone floors of Brazilian mahogany. In the corner farthest from her was a moonstone-blue staircase that went nowhere. It just stopped, as in a Surrealist dreamscape, four or five feet from the ceiling.
“Norval?” Samira called out. “Norval?” Her prince had abandoned her. “Why did I go to lunch with him?” she asked herself, while watching a ceiling fan, inlaid with mother-of-pearl, spin languorously. “Because I was starving. Fine. But why did I come back to his place?”
She closed her eyes and tried to replay things on the dark screen of her eyelids. Today was no problem. She remembered everything: meeting Norval in the elevator, then Dr. Vorta and … this guy who looked like Norval’s brother. Noel? Who just stood and gawked, without saying a word … She remembered descending in the elevator with this same man, then waiting for Norval in a sushi restaurant across the street; she remembered arriving at his place and asking if she could go to sleep. But why was she so sleepy? Because Dr. Vorta had given her something—a sedative? Yes, today was clear—today she remembered everything. It was last week she had trouble with. She was at a party of some sort, at a shooting-gallery or squat in Mile End that belonged to a friend of a friend’s … No, it wasn’t that party, it was another one, in Villeray, something to do with school. But then things went black and murky and monstrous, like Loch Ness.
Where’s my knapsack? She opened her eyes and saw it lying beside her on a ledge, under a telescope tripod. She opened it, checked the contents, then pulled out a diary. Looking for a clue, she flipped through its pages. Nothing. No entries since the party. She now wrote:
Memoirs of an amnesiac. January (or maybe December). I was at a party in Villeray, and then suddenly I wasn’t. Things went dark & turning & I woke up with a hole in my brain & vomit in my boot. Then Dr. Ravenscroft was there, and Dr. Rhéaume, who drove me to the police. And then home. And told me to come to see her on
Here Samira put her pen down because it had run dry. She rummaged in her bag for another, unsuccessfully, then looked from side to side. Recessed into the wall, just above the bed frame, were three small drawers, painted the same colour as the wall, barely visible. She pried open the first with her fingernails and found what looked like lenses— telescope and camera lenses.
The second contained thick beige writing paper, a postcard of a church with a sketched portrait on the back, a small jewellery box and … a gold-nibbed fountain pen. She glanced sideward and rearward, lest by some infernal magic Norval could see her, before taking the pen out. And then the postcard. And then the jewellery case.
Again she looked in all directions before opening the case, whose miniature golden key was in the lock. Inside was a silver ring, a three-part gimbal ring. Closed, the clasped hands formed a traditional friendship ring; opened, the hidden inner ring revealed two hearts, along with an engraved inscription:
Nor,
Love always,
Terry
Terry? Is Norval gay? She examined the sketch on the postcard:
She restored each item, carefully, trusting her memory for their exact positions. Still burning with curiosity, not to mention guilt, she quickly pried open the third drawer. And closed it just as quickly. You don’t want to go there, she said to herself. She counted to three and then reopened it: Rakehell condoms, black silk rope and a Zorro mask. And a vial of … white powder. With only a black “K” on the label. She re-closed the drawer.
Pen in hand, she began flipping through the pages of her diary, to a section called “MEN, or MISTAKES I have made,” and added, in royal purple ink:
January/02
Norval. Met two strange men in the Psych elevator today, within minutes of each other—one on the way up, one on the way down. They had a strange resemblance, as if they were brothers. One, cute but possibly a strayed lunatic, uttered barely a word; the other, absurdly good-looking, talked the entire time. I couldn’t take my eyes off him. Who was he? A decadently dandified baron on his way home from the opera? A brooding count with a bloodstained past? Certainly a smug bastard, with a martial tone that could freeze nitrogen—and a strong, virile, almost animal beauty which was, quite simply, irresistible. The type that entangle me in their sticky little webs, that draw me crashwards. Is that exquisitely ravaged face my fate, I wonder? Why am I so predictable? Why do I always go for beautiful brutes and bastards? Every society, I once read, must be wary of the unattached male, especially the attractive one, for he is universally the cause of countless social ills
She set
down Norval’s fountain pen and leafed backwards:
Claude. Maybe it’s me. Maybe I’m just attracted to borderline lunatics. I meet them wherever I go—bars , bookstores, parties, movies, museums. Yet whether they’re young or old, rich or poor, the scenario is always the same: After we “get involved,” they go blitzoid on me. Sometimes this takes the form of them smacking me around. Other times it’s screaming about how I won’t “commit.” Both of these things happened today. So I’ve reached a decision—I’m taking the veil. A vow of chastity. That’s it, it’s over. No more sex, no more relationships . . .
Pietro. Sat beside me on the train—in a completely empty car. Forty-five minutes with a pawing Pithecanthropus bog-man with merging eyebrows and barf breath …
Nick. Why do men do this? He started by slobbering all over me, his spinning tongue car-washing my face. He ended by chomping on my clitoris. I screamed, and the moron thought I was climaxing …
Max. A tad effeminate, not usually my style, but a nice face, nice skin. And besides, I was very drunk. We quickly, much too quickly, arrived at the moment of truth, the nervy moment in every one-night stand: the unveiling. Peewee or panther—what’s it going to be? Max was not a peewee, Max was not a panther. Max was a she.
Howard. Yet another man on a quest for permanent youth, fiercely resisting responsibilities of adulthood, living in his parents’ basement. One of those no-life “adultescents” who, when they aren’t playing with their video toys, are playing with themselves.
Jérome. A blind date. After which I severed my relationship with the matchmaker. Forever. First thing I noticed was his expensive Armani suit and strange dominating attitude, as though he’d crushed thousands in real estate deals. Next thing I noticed was his pony tail. Men, write this down: what this says is pimp, pornmaker or disturbed offender. After listening politely to twenty minutes of self-hero worship, I edgewised that I was going to the bathroom. “You’re going the wrong way, girl,” he said. “No I’m not, boy,” I said and walked to my bathroom at home.